


I Saw A Life

by akadiene



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Concussions, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Magical Realism, Period-Typical Homophobia, hockey injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-11 01:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11704380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akadiene/pseuds/akadiene
Summary: Jack goes down on the ice, and wakes up in 1951, married to Camilla Collins. Sort of. It's complicated.





	I Saw A Life

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [OMGCP_Heartbreak_Fest_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/OMGCP_Heartbreak_Fest_2017) collection. 



> My prompt was: "Reincarnation Fic. Jack takes a rough hit and starts having flashbacks of a past life he shared with Bitty. But he doesn't remember everything, he just knows he was in a secret, possibly illegal relationship and it ended very badly. Jack becomes obsessed and discovers that he was likely responsible for past-Bitty's death."
> 
> This doesn't exactly follow the prompt, and I'm sorry about that. Bitty doesn't die, which I'm less sorry about. I hope whoever prompted this likes it anyway!
> 
> I'm not a historian!! I definitely got some historical (and political) details wrong. And I know canonically the Haus was built in the 80s, not the 40s, but for this story we're juuust going to ignore that. I also paid less attention to the timeline here than I usually do, so if there are discrepancies in their ages and dates and things here, then we'll blame it on a tight deadline. This was fun to write and I didn't really want to be bogged down with all the research and details that I normally obsess over.
> 
> Thank you to my two betas, Jenna (@angeryginger) and B (@wern), for your advice, corrections, critiques, brainstorming, and for your friendship. I love and appreciate you both very much.
> 
> Title from Joanna Newsom's [On a Good Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WFtFEBob08): _I saw a life, and I called it mine. I saw it, drawn so sweet and fine, and I had begun to fill in all the lines, right down to what we'd name her..._

The last thing Jack sees before going down is Tater pulling his helmet off to join the fight.

The last thing he hears is yelling so loud it can be heard over the din of the crowd, though he can’t understand the Russian.

The last thing he feels is a blunt, heavy thump in the back of his skull, and then it goes black -- and white, flashing bright ice -- and black -- and there are urgent voices -- and sirens -- and then there is nothing.

They were winning when he went down. Game four, second round. TD Garden. Up by one, third period. The only goal on the board was his. Assisted by Tater, as always. Rough game, clearly. But as long as they win --

He realizes there’s something in the nothing: pain, more pain that he ever thought possible. Cutting and sharp. And a cold beyond the ice, which hurts his face and makes it hard to breathe. Like glass on his skin, he thinks. Or wind. Yes, wind. Bitter, freezing. Why is it windy?

And then it’s gone.

Really, the nothing is nice. Familiar, even. He died, once, though that wasn’t for very long. He wonders if he’s dying again now.

 

* * *

 

Jack wakes, so he is alive. Unless what comes after death looks like a dimly lit hospital room in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t think so. In any case he hasn’t believed in any kind of afterlife since at least 2008. One of the many things that died when he did. Possibly Shitty would have something appropriately dramatic to say about the connection between his resurrection by medical science and his non-belief in -- whatever, or whoever, but Jack’s never mentioned it.

So, okay, good, he’s alive. He’s alone, but that’s fine. It’s late -- past 3 in the morning, the clock on the wall says. His left arm is in a cast hanging from the ceiling and where it cuts off his hand is wrapped tightly in gauze and tape. Nothing hurts, but there’s an IV drip in his right arm, a jarring alien intrusion in his body he hates. If he had been awake when they put it in he might have had something to say about that but he’ll give his doctors the benefit of the doubt. The Falconers’ medical staff knows about his history, and his parents were at the game anyway. He still wants to rip it out, and lying here alone it’s easy to forget the years he spent training himself into the willpower and discipline that he has always needed but didn’t have when he was younger. Impulsiveness is still something he struggles with, to mostly bad results, though Bitty says it gives him a propensity for grand romantic gestures and likes to call it spontaneity. To make a point, Jack thinks. Bitty likes making points. And the point, right now, is that Jack is staring at the needle in his arm, drip-drip-dripping what he suspects is morphine into his system, and he wants it gone more even than he wants the cast off. He hates that he needs it. He could probably pull it out himself with his mouth if he bent down at the right angle.

A nurse chooses that moment of weakness to walk in, and stumbles when their eyes meet.

“Oh!” she says. “We didn’t expect you to be awake until the morning.”

He frowns, and forgets about the IV. “Sorry,” he says.

“Oh, goodness, no, don’t be sorry! I’ll just have to let our anesthesiologist know. How are you feeling?” she says with the strongest Massachusetts accent Jack’s ever heard short of Shitty. She looks very awake for this time of night which must mean she’s just starting her shift, and she seems to be probably about the same age as Jack is, though she doesn’t look particularly starstruck to see him. Possibly because he’s a Falconer in a Boston hospital. It’s almost enough to make him smile.

“Um, alright,” he says. Then, because the question hasn’t occurred to him until now, “what happened?”

“Let me tell you while I take your temperature,” she says.

Everything feels dulled around the edges, and he is slow to understand her words, so she has to tap on his chin with the plastic thermometer until he opens his mouth.

“Well, you went down in that fight,” she says, and takes a deep breath, “and let me tell you, because I was watching that game before coming into work, that I cannot figure out for the life of me why you even jumped in there especially in a playoff game. I mean I know you’re a big guy but I’ve been paying attention and you’re not an enforcer by any means, not like Mashkov is.”

She takes the thermometer out and nods at whatever the handheld says before popping the disposable cover off and into the garbage bin beside his bed.

“Um,” he says.

“All good there,” she says, then smiles. “Right. Well, you went down, and your helmet came off which is why got quite a bump on your head. So that knocked you out but before you could be moved out of the way I think it was McQuaid that tripped and fell onto your arm. His skate sliced your hand.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve got a fractured radius and ten stitches in your hand, and a concussion. You came out of surgery around one, a couple hours ago now,” she says. “Your family took a hotel room not far from here so they’ll be back in the morning. Now. Can I get you anything?”

He’s -- just tired, mostly. Just tired. He wants sleep -- and, and Bitty. It would be nice to have him here. He wonders if Bitty is at the hotel with Jack’s parents or if he’s at Shitty’s. They were at the game, Jack remembers. He looks up to see the nurse waiting for an answer so he shakes his head.

“Alright. You just press that button there on your bed if you need me. Oh,” she says before turning to leave, “and I don’t know if I should be the one telling you this, but, I don’t think --”

“I’m not. I’m not going back on the ice,” he says. Even to his ears it sounds slurred.

“Not for a while,” she says. She does look sorry, for a Bruins fan. What’s her name? Did she tell him? Did he ask? “I don’t know how long. Months, probably, just resting and rehab, then some physio. But for what it’s worth, you did win.”

Well, that’s alright, he thinks. They won. We won. It’s his last thought before slipping into darkness once more.

 

* * *

 

What strikes him as he begins to wake is the quiet. Late spring mornings have a particularly lovely kind of quiet, he thinks, one that isn’t really quiet at all: birds singing their first songs of the day, cars driving by in the street outside, the ring of the bell on a child’s bicycle as they make their way to school, Camilla already in the kitchen preparing breakfast and baking the week’s bread. Their bedroom window is open so he can smell the grass he cut yesterday evening, and the yeast and flour from the kitchen, and it’s good. It is Samwell 1951, and there’s nothing out of place in Jack’s life.

Every morning he has the same thing to eat and it’s already laid out for him when he gets to the table. A small bowl of oatmeal with precisely the right amount of molasses already poured onto it, a hard-boiled egg, two pieces of toast with butter, and a cup of tea with one cube of sugar, always in the same white speckled mug with the rim of blue around the top.

“Good morning,” he says, and leans over kiss Camilla on the forehead like he does every day before sitting down to eat. Her hair is in its usual curlers and she’s wearing the apron he got her for her birthday, which is yellow with soft brown flowers on it to match her eyes. “Smells good in here.”

“Hm?” She’s frowning at a letter in her hand, ignoring her own plate of toast, but seems to register his words after a second because she puts down the letter and looks up. “Oh, yes, I’m trying out a new recipe Patty from across the street lent me. Porridge bread. It’s got molasses right in it.”

Jack frowns and looks down at his plate. “A new recipe?”

Camilla smiles and pats his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve made regular loaves too. It’s just to try, to see if you like it.”

He nods. He probably will like it, but he doesn’t think it’ll replace his regular white bread with butter in the morning. Camilla likes their routines too. She does, it’s one of the reasons he married her back in 46. Though perhaps she is not as dependent on them, she hates chaos and disorder as much as he, and doesn’t like big surprises either. They are well-suited, he thinks, and he admires her. They never had a grand romance like in the pictures but they do understand each other, and in any case Jack likes their quiet life. He doesn’t need or want anything more.

“What’s that?” he says, pointing to the letter.

“Oh,” she says, “my sister’s pregnant.”

“Again?” Jack says. He takes a spoonful of oatmeal and it is just right.

“Again,” Camilla says, and sighs. “She’s due in December, they think. I don’t know how they’ll afford it what with Johnny just barely able to work with his bad leg and that house falling apart as it is. The veteran’s pay barely covers anything, you know.”

“How old is Beatrice now?”

“She’s nearly five Jack, you know that. And the twins are three.”

“Right,” he says, and starts in on his egg. “Well, I guess we could, we could hold off on getting a new car until next year and help outfit the new baby. Maybe get school things for Beatrice.” It isn’t in his plans for the year but it’s okay, he thinks. He gets good pay from the university. Their house is nearly paid off and he was going to resell the car anyway since it has a few years of life in it yet. There’s no use having money if he doesn’t spend it.

“Oh, Jack,” Camilla says, “that’s some nice of you to say, but I don’t think she’d take the charity. You know Johnny is awful proud.”

“They’re family,” he says, “not charity.”

“Let’s talk about it some more later. It’s a big decision to make over breakfast.” She puts the letter aside and finally begins eating her toast.

“I’ve got two classes today and a faculty meeting in the afternoon but maybe after supper we could go for a walk,” he says. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

“Sure,” Camilla says, “if I’m not too tired from playing tennis later with Patty from across the street.”

“Of course,” he says.

“Now hurry and finish up so I can clean up and put the laundry out before I have to go.”

Monday is laundry day, after all.

Before he walks out onto Jason Street to wave at Patty from across the street’s husband Lionel who is usually getting into his car at the same time as Jack is, he kisses Camilla again, because he can.

His classes go well for the day, and there is some interesting discussion particularly in his History of Canada (1604 - 1760), and the monthly faculty meeting where Jack is as always charged with the taking-down of minutes goes smoothly. Things are winding down and soon exams will be upon them and so events and changes to be voted on are few. The addition of a Teachers’ College in the fall is interesting but of course they had known it was coming and were waiting for the news. Some new faculty have already been hired, says Doctor Gibson, the department head.

“Where will they be staying?” asks Doctor Joseph Bizinski, who has his office next door to Jack’s and whom Jack can hear singing along with the radio on most afternoons.

“Those new houses the university built on Jason Street,” Doctor Gibson says. “Thank you Truman’s post-war economy for that.”

“Boom-and-bust,” says one of the anthropology professors.

“Agree to disagree,” says Gibson.

“Bah, we’ll see in ten years.”

“And then you can buy me a drink when I’m right. In any case, if any of you see the new faculty moving in, stop by and say hello. Jack, that’s your street, is it not?” Gibson asks, and Jack startles up from his typewriter.

“Uh, Jason? Yes,” he says.

“Well maybe invite someone over for supper. Make friends. The administration is thinking long-term, and the Humanities department needs this boost.”

Friends, Jack thinks. Alright. We can make friends.

The meeting ends on that note and Jack hands over the minutes so that Gibson’s secretary can go through and retype the parts with mistakes, and Camilla is waiting at home with an icy ginger ale for him and roast beef in the oven when he gets there. She is rosy-cheeked and pretty as she tells him about her match with Patty from across the street, and the porridge bread from this morning is quite good, like he suspected it would be.

The evening air is sweet and there are children playing in some yards as the days have been growing long in preparation for June. Their laughter rings all around. It’s not yet time for the mosquitoes and moths and junebugs to come out and for that Jack is grateful as he takes Camilla’s arm around his to walk down the sidewalk. They’ll walk down the street and across the bridge to the pond and turn around before it gets dark. Ten years ago this street didn’t exist really, not the sidewalk nor most of the houses, and when Jack and Camilla moved onto it three years ago they were among the first. It’s a good neighbourhood and directly adjacent to campus, which is of course why there are so many professors and staff members living along the street. It feels, Camilla once said, full of life.

“Look,” she says now, “that must be one of the new professors you were telling me about.” She points up the street to a house which had sat empty previously, and which now has an old pick-up filled with boxes in it. There’s a man pulling one out from the bed as she gestures.

“Must be,” Jack agrees.

“Let’s go say hello.”

He did say he’d make friends, didn’t he.

“Alright.”

The man seems younger than Jack is but perhaps not by much -- closer to Camilla’s age, he suspects -- and is sweating from the exertion of carrying in boxes. As they approach Jack sees him set down a box and wiping off his brow with a handkerchief, pushing his blond hair away from his forehead so it sticks up. His shirt is unbuttoned leaving his undershirt exposed and his suspenders are hanging down from his waist.

“I’ve got some ice-cold Coca-Cola waiting for the person who can help me lift this box of books and bring it up to my office,” the man says, unprompted, and Camilla laughs as she pushes Jack toward him.

“Hello,” Jack says. He shakes the man’s hand. It’s firm, if clammy from the exertion. “I’m Doctor Jack Zimmermann.”

“You don’t have to introduce yourself as a doctor every time, you know,” Camilla says. She takes his hand in turn. “Hi, I’m Camilla Zimmermann.”

“Well, I’m Professor Eric Bittle and it’s lovely to meet y’all,” the man, Bittle, says. “But I wish I wasn’t in such a condition for a first meeting.”

Something in Jack twists at the sound of Bittle’s voice but loosens so immediately he cannot recall the feeling afterwards. But he is left searching for it, like when you’re sitting on the sofa and you have to move, and then you can’t for the life of you remember in which position you were sitting before, and nothing feels as good after that.

“It’s, uh, it’s fine,” Jack says. Camilla frowns at him. “I think we’re in the same faculty.”

“Are we now! So this is the famous Samwell Humanities Welcome Committee!”

“It’s just, it’s just me and Camilla,” Jack says, then realizes Bittle is joking, so he laughs a little.

Bittle stretches his arms out and cracks his neck. “I’m going to be teaching a couple American Studies courses at the Teachers’ College. You know, history for those who don’t like history.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “I do just, just regular history. Well, uh, early North American mostly. Canadian, actually.”

“Jack,” Camilla says, “why don’t you help bring those boxes in and then we can leave Professor Bittle to his unpacking, hm?”

“Only if you don’t mind,” Bittle says. “I hate to be rude but I do have quite a bit to do before heading on off to bed. Such is the life of a procrastinator.”

“I don’t,” Jack says.

“And just call me -- call me Eric.”

In bed later that night Jack kisses Camilla and kisses her some more and cups her breasts through her nightdress until she says, breathless, “now just what’s gotten into you today?”

“I don’t know,” he says. It’s the truth.

She asks because they don’t do this often, he knows, and at the moment he can’t possibly remember why.

“It’s fine, I picked up some Lysol earlier today with Patty from across the street.”

Well, that’s one reason, he supposes, but not enough of one to matter right now.

He falls asleep naked, smelling of love-making, with Camilla and her gentle breaths on her side of the bed, and he is content.

 

* * *

 

It’s two weeks before Jack can be discharged and in the meantime he’s restless, and surly, and bored, and angry, and tired, and sometimes he’s all of those at once. Bitty is there as much as he can to tell funny stories about his students that make the everyone laugh, and bring in sweets for the workers, though he sighs sadly when he thinks Jack isn’t paying attention. Having Bitty in Jack’s hospital room by his side is always better though, a bright spot in his days, and it’s the only time Jack can talk about the team and his recovery without feeling the weight of his guilt making it hard to think and speak. But Bitty has his final B/Ed practicum before graduation and has to be there. He brings his middle schoolers’ homework to correct when he comes to Boston for Jack but it’s a lot for him, to travel back and forth from Providence, and get all his correction and lesson planning done too. Jack sees the dark circles under Bitty’s eyes and though at one time he would have been selfish enough not to say anything, he has learned enough from Bitty in the past few years to know how to take care of others as much as he can, and to know that he must push Bitty to take care of himself. To go home straight after school some nights so he can eat properly and sleep, no matter how much Jack wishes he could have him all the time.

Back when it became clear that short of catastrophically extraordinary circumstances -- which have happened, Gretzky was traded after all -- Jack is staying in Providence long-term, his parents bought small condo not far from Jack’s building. At the time he’d protested but he’s thankful for it, now. He doesn’t want to have to worry about them. They visit, and it’s nice, and both Bob and Alicia charm the staff, and they resolutely don’t talk more about hockey than Jack can handle.

The afternoon following the accident Marty and Thirdy, both retired now, come by with their wives and kids. Later Tater and his daughter, Snowy and Poots visit which is kind of them, but of course it is playoffs season and Jack can’t really blame them for only coming a few times or expect them to come visit more than that. He keeps track of the games only through Bitty and Paige, the nurse from the first night who insists he call her by her first name only, as he can’t watch any television because of his concussion, and wouldn’t anyway. After begging Paige on his third day spent mostly in bed she relents and lets him walk around the children’s wing, and it makes him feel better to see their little faces light up and their Bruins-loving parents struggle between making a joke at the expense of the Falconers and not wanting to offend Jack Zimmermann. Around the third day he stops by it’s no longer an issue.

Part of the team med staff comes by at one point, as does his coaches and trainers and George. No one wants to say ‘career-ending injury’ and for that he is at once frustrated and hopeful, though perhaps treacherously. Instead they say things like we’ll take it one day at a time and we’ll get the best physical therapists money can buy and we’re not leaving you behind, Jack, we’re not done with you yet. But really, the only thing that’s certain is that he’ll be out all summer and maybe even into the first bit of next season. Bitty cries when Jack tells him. I’m crying for you, Jack, he says. You’re only 29.

He’s two months shy of 29 really, and not yet out to the public, so the hospital staff has been told Bitty is a cousin on his mom’s side. Basing it on looks alone it’s not such a ridiculous notion. Paige is sharp and sometimes Jack thinks she could say something but she is also sharp enough that he knows she won’t. It’s better not to involve legal staff, in any case, and he knows he’d have to if she even mentioned Bitty spending too much time at the hospital or seeing him pull his hand away from Jack’s whenever she walks in.

Eventually he’s discharged, and going home is a relief, but it’s harder than Jack expected. Bitty asks the doctors more questions than Jack had thought possible and takes neater notes than he’s ever taken for class. There are near-daily appointments with his therapist, the one he’s had since he moved to Providence, a visit to the team dietician, and weekly check-ups with his doctor and the team physicians, and eventually there’ll be physiotherapists and an occupational therapist and yoga and training and. And it’s a lot, and thankfully Bitty is done his practicum Jack’s second week home, because he is in pain and lonely and angry and disappointed, and so fucking bored. The team got knocked out and are home again but they’re in no mood to see him. Privately he thinks some of them even blame him.

“I’m going to the grocery store,” Bitty announces one afternoon. When he lived alone Jack had used a delivery service but Bitty enjoys grocery shopping, Jack knows, picking out his own produce and deciding what he’ll make for the week, and sometimes Jack joins in, because he enjoys hearing Bitty talk about how to detect ripeness in fruits and seeing him choose the perfect cuts of meat and fish at the meat counter. “Do you want anything?”

“I want to come with you,” Jack says. He’s barely been outside since he came home two weeks ago and he has too much energy to stay home much longer.

“I don’t know, Jack,” Bitty says. “You had a headache this morning.”

Some days he forgets about the concussion. The arm and hand is so much harder to ignore.

“Bits, I’m bored.”

“The doctor said for you to rest.”

Jack stares as Bitty bites his lip, flipping his truck keys in his hand.

“God, just -- fuck, let me do this,” Jack says.

Bitty frowns. “Alright, alright, no need to snap.”

The worst is that Bitty knows what it’s like to be an athlete and to rely on your body for everything and then have it fail you. The concussion, and the fainting, after all. But it’s just -- Jack’s mind has never been any good. His body is all that he has. His body and -- and Bitty.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He holds out his hand for Bitty and they tangle fingers. “Thank you for being patient with me.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Bitty says. “I know this is hard. We’re both trying.”

Well, Jack is stubborn, at least, too stubborn to admit that exposing himself to the fluorescent lighting at the store is maybe a bad idea, but he can’t go change his mind now. It’s good though. The social interaction is good for him. Sometimes he forgets that. He’s recognized, of course, how could he not be with such a conspicuous cast on his arm and in Providence, but most just stop to wish him a swift recovery and leave him alone. No one even looks at Bitty.

A man with a little girl holding his hand stands by Jack as he’s picking out avocados, Bitty next to him look for the perfect apples, and from the man’s stance Jack can tell he’s waiting to say something. The little girl seems much less shy.

“Hello,” she says. The man -- her father, Jack assumes -- turns and makes a face. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m getting my groceries,” he says. Her gaze is piercing and calculating in the way only a child’s can be. “My name is Jack. What’s your name?”

“Now, don’t bother Mr Zimmermann,” the man says, as if he wasn’t about to do just that, but Jack doesn’t really mind right now. He seems embarrassed and -- familiar, a little, but Providence is so small it’s not that unusual to recognize strangers. Not as small as Samwell was, of course, but the two aren’t so many degrees apart from each other.

“It’s fine,” Jack says, “really.”

“Oh, well, thank you,” the man says. “I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan and I was real sorry to hear about your injuries. You’ve done a lot good for hockey in this town, you know. Brought a lot of business to us.”

Jack’s heard it all before. A lot of people, and frankly Jack too when he was younger, thought that a team in Providence was just a waste of money and resources, what with the Bruins so close, and their farm team in Providence itself. But the last few years, since Jack and the year before him with Tater, have proven otherwise.

“Thank you,” Jack says, “but you know I’m just trying to play good hockey.”

Bitty stays quiet and a little ways away, as he always does during such interactions, but Jack sees him smile like the apples have just told him a good joke. Then, just as the man is about to say something, the little girl tugs on her father’s arm, startling him into dropping his basket, sending what little he has in it tumbling to the floor.

“Oh my god,” Bitty says, and steps forward. “Let me help you with that.”

“No, I’m good, sir, thank you,” says the man. “Beatrice, please be more careful.”

He drops down on one knee to reach for his things.

“Sorry, Daddy,” she says. She picks up a bottle of pasta sauce from the floor and puts it in the basket.

“Lucky you didn’t have any eggs in there,” Bitty says.

“Oh, hey, are you Camilla’s brother-in-law?” Jack asks, because right then he’s sure that’s where he’s seen the man before. How, he doesn’t know. Facebook, maybe. Jack and Camilla weren’t together very long and what they did together required little talking about family. In any case back then Jack didn’t speak about his family to anyone but Shitty and his therapist, and even then it was difficult to speak of it without speaking of Kent, who was so mixed up in it all and in Jack’s conception of family and love and who wasn’t even out yet, who wouldn’t come out for another two years after Jack and Shitty’s graduation, so Jack didn't feel like he could speak of Kent even if he knew how. It’s better now. Jack’s better now.

The man grunts as he pushes himself up and takes the basket with him.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m Johnny. She’s mentioned you before, I just didn’t, you know, want to make it weird.”

“No, it’s fine,” Jack says. “How’s your leg?”

“My leg?”

Jack frowns. He doesn’t know why he said that, so he thinks. “Did she post something on Facebook about your leg recently? I have her on there.” It’s all he can come up with.

“Yeah, actually. A GoFundMe campaign, because I can’t work all that much, so. That was all her idea, you know, Camilla’s. We didn’t really need -- anyway. My leg -- well, it’s my knee really, it’s all brand new in there, it’s healing alright now. They got all the shrapnel out. Still stiff sometimes though, you know?”

“Well,” Jack says, “I’m sure I’ll find out.”

They all look to his arm.

“Daddy, can we go now?” Beatrice asks. She’s hopping from one foot to the other and swinging her arms.

“Yeah, yeah, we have to get a few more things first. But it was, uh, nice meeting you, Mr Zimmermann.”

“Please, call me Jack,” Jack says. He shakes Johnny’s hand. “See you around. And you too, Beatrice. Stay out of trouble, alright?”

“Well!” Bitty says once they’re out of earshot. “That was an odd interaction.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. In all honesty he’s not quite sure what it was.

“Ask you what you had for lunch yesterday and you can’t remember but you’ll remember your ex’s brother-in-law’s GoFundMe campaign from Facebook two weeks ago, no problem.”

“To be fair, I barely even know what that is,” Jack says. “And anyway, I’m concussed. All scrambled up in here.” He taps his head with his good hand.

“Yeah, yeah, you keep bringing that up, you know it gets you what you want.” Bitty begins to push the cart away and Jack follows him to the cheese section and stares ahead, up and down Bitty’s body. The last few years have been good to his boyfriend.

“And just what is it that I want right now?” Jack asks. He goes to lean on the cart with his arms because he wants to look smooth, or something, then stops himself and stumbles at the last second when he realizes that’s probably not the best idea.

Unnoticing, Bitty turns and winks over his shoulder, then says, “nothing you’re getting anytime soon. You’re concussed, remember? And otherwise injured. No strenuous activity. Doctor’s orders.”

“God,” Jack says. He throws his head back to groan it. “This is the fucking worst.”

“Now, now. You just have to be good until the doctors say you’re a bit better.”

“And then what?”

Bitty just smiles and hands Jack a tub of feta. It’s going to be a long summer.

 

* * *

 

Spring stumbles into summer with days of uninterrupted rain interspersed with weak sunshine, leaving their garden lacking but their grass very green if waterlogged, and Camilla complains about the weather at least once a day. Her thrice-weekly tennis matches with Patty from across the street are cancelled more often than not and her hair, she says, refuses to set properly. Jack doesn’t mind as much as really he prefers the winter and its sparkling untouched snowscapes, its frozen ponds to skate on, over anything else, but at least he is getting a lot of reading done. Though they do buy a television, so Camilla can watch The Lone Ranger and Jane Wyman Presents, as she says all the neighbourhood women have been talking about them. Jack prefers the nightly news on CBS and doesn’t pay much attention to it aside from that, but it’s nice, he thinks, for Camilla to get that kind of stimulation from the television.

He doesn’t speak much to Eric after their initial meeting though Jack knows he could more than likely go over at any time. He uses the rain and the fact that Eric probably needs time to settle in and start planning his courses as an excuse, and then the summer terms begins the first week of June, and so he is back into his teaching routine, which makes it difficult to make time for any new friends. There is something that itches under Jack’s skin whenever he thinks of stopping by to say hello, to see if Eric is always as dishevelled and half-dressed as he was that first time. But casual friendship has never been an easy thing or even a priority for Jack. Camilla has always been enough. They see each other sometimes, though, once at the butcher’s and occasionally in the Humanities building, as it seems Eric’s office is not far from Jack’s. He can hear Eric’s laughter from his end. It is clear and loud and ringing like the Samwell noontime bell.

Mid-June is when they speak next. It is a rare sunny Sunday afternoon when Eric knocks on the door.

“Uh,” Jack says when he opens it. He has never before noticed the freckles that pepper Eric’s face. “Hello.”

“Hello Doctor Zimmermann,” Eric says.

“Jack,” says Jack.

“I know,” Eric says, then, kindly, “it was a joke.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “Of course. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you,” Eric says. “How are you?”

“I’m also well.”

Eric laughs. It’s the same as Jack remembers it.

“I’m just wondering if I could borrow some butter from you,” he says.

“Jack,” Camilla calls from the living room, “who’s at the door?”

“It’s Eric,” Jack says. “Do we have any butter?”

She must appear behind him because Eric’s eyes flit to look above Jack’s shoulder and then his smile widens and he lifts up a glass measuring cup which Jack hadn’t noticed before.

“I just need a cup. Cold as you can make it.”

“Of course we have butter. What’s it for?”

“Biscuits.”

“Oh, is your wife making some?”

“I don’t have a wife. I live alone.”

“Then you’re baking?” Camilla says. She laughs like she did that time Jack had mentioned he’d always wanted a dog.

“Bless your heart,” Eric says, “I sure am.”

“I’ve never met a man who bakes biscuits before.”

Jack says nothing. He hasn’t either.

“Neither have I but I’m sure I’m not the first,” says Eric. “Especially not in this nice liberal town you got here.”

Camilla purses her lips as Jack watches then smiles and takes the measuring cup from Eric’s hand and says, “well, come on into the kitchen.”

“Oh, what lovely wallpaper!” Eric says once they’re in it. “And those curtains, is that chintz?”

“Yes,” Camilla says. She opens the refrigerator and takes out a new package of butter. “Tell me, how long have you been baking, Eric?” she asks.

“Well!” Eric says. “About as long as I can recall.”

“How nice,” Camilla says. “And your family never minded?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Eric says, “but they sure did like my pies.”

“I like pie but poor Jack prefers cakes, don’t you, honey.”

“What?” Jack says. “I enjoy both.”

In the living room the television is still on and in the silence that rings out after Jack’s words he finds it a comfort to focus on. He feels he’s missed something from the way Camilla’s face is pinched in a way he rarely sees it. Jack has been speaking mainly English for years, and spoke it often at home with his mother and her side of the family growing up, but he still on occasion misses things, underlying meaning and context and euphemisms. It can be frustrating but Camilla has always done her best to be clear with her words, which is something he appreciates perhaps more than she knows. It’s partly why he loves history so much -- facts and events are easy to translate. People, however, are not.

“Just take the whole block of butter,” Camilla finally says. “I don’t mind.”

“That’s so kind of you, if you’re sure you don’t need any,” Eric says.

“It’s quite alright. I have more in the refrigerator in any case.”

“Well, thank you so much. I’ll be sure to bring Jack some biscuits tomorrow for him to bring home.”

“That would be lovely. I have some strawberry-rhubarb jam I made last week that would go well with them.”

“You’ll have to give me your recipe sometime,” Eric says. Camilla follows him to the porch.

“Oh, you make jam too! Jack,” Camilla says, “I’m just going across the street to Patty’s. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Jack looks at his watch, and frowns. “But in an hour --”

“I’ll be back in time to start supper, darling,” she says. He watches them leave together chatting about the merits of jams versus jellies and he shrugs. An hour is just enough time to mow the lawn, and Sunday is lawn night, after all.

Camilla asks him that evening after supper if he has ever thought of having children. Louise, her sister, is thinking of names for the baby already, Camilla says.

Jack says, “no, I’ve never thought of it.”

They are on the porch swing reading and he sets aside his National Geographic -- there’s a new map of the United States in there he may put in his office -- and looks at his wife. He hasn’t thought of it, though he thinks now that after four years of marriage, that seems like an oversight. Camilla’s never mentioned it before, though it would be strange if she’d never thought of it, as most women do.

“Should I be thinking of it?” he asks.

Camilla is silent for a few long seconds. He slaps away a mosquito from her arm and she barely flinches, but the redness is already bursting on her skin. It’ll need witch hazel later.

“Maybe so,” she finally says.

“Are you thinking of it? Is it, is it something you want? Children?”

He never thought -- well, maybe it would be nice, but he never thought they needed anything more. She never wanted a dog.

“Let’s just think about it,” she says.

“Alright.”

“Patty just said something earlier, you know.”

“Patty from across street?”

“Yes, do you want to know what she said, she said we would make very handsome babies, you and I. That we were very handsome people.”

Startled, Jack laughs, and then Camilla begins to giggle, so he pulls her to his side and laughs into the side of her temple.

“And that’s why you were thinking of it?” he says.

“She said it would be a shame if we were to keep all the handsome to ourselves,” she says into his neck like a teenager, and her cheeks are warm from blushing.

“Well, in that case, I say we start with five and see how we feel after that.”

“Five children!”

“Five sets of twins,” Jack says. “It runs in your family, it’s entirely possible.”

“They do say it skips a generation.”

“Your father was a twin, and your sister had twins.”

“You’re right, then, entirely possible.”

“Remember the Dionne quintuplets? From Ontario?” Jack says. “They were on those syrup advertisements when I was younger.”

“Gosh, Jack, they must be near twenty years old now. Are you saying we should have quintuplets?”

“It would be more efficient, but only if you can keep your handsome figure. ”

She swats at his arm. “Jack!”

When they go to bed that night and Camilla has turned out the lights and tucked herself into the thinnest of bedsheets as she can’t bear to sleep uncovered even in the early summer heat they haven’t yet grown accustomed to, she whispers, “just think about it,” into the dark.

“I will,” he whispers back. He’s still unsure if he wants to, but he will, for her.

In the early afternoon before Monday’s last class of the day Jack is in his office correcting some papers when Eric knocks on the frame of the open door, holding up a paper bag in his other hand.

“Are you hungry?” Eric says when Jack nods at him to enter.

“I could be persuaded if the right biscuit came along,” Jack says. Eric laughs. He laughs a lot. It is one of the only things Jack knows about him.

“Oh, your office is nice. Mine is so bare in comparison, though maybe that’s for the best. I could never be this tidy.”

Jack looks around to see what Eric sees. Neat bookshelves with their occupants arranged by subject and alphabetically, a set of rich red encyclopedias on the shelf nearest Jack for easier to reach them, his typewriter, a few photographs along the wall chosen by Camilla -- Jack and Camilla in Montréal, Camilla in her wedding dress holding a baby Beatrice, another of their wedding, this time with Jack and posing with their parents -- a nice Persian rug on the floor, an armchair for visitors and a table with a globe on it, some small gifts student have given him throughout the few years he’s been here scattered on the shelves here and there. A potted plant that Jack is constantly amazed he hasn’t killed yet. This part of the building is one of the oldest on campus, and as such Jack’s office smells like worn wood and books, and he is fond of it.

Eric sits in the arm chair. “So comfortable! And I heard you were such a difficult professor.”

“I am,” Jack says. “Very.”

“Ah, you lull them into ease before telling them why they’ve failed your class.”

“Not -- never deliberately,” says Jack. “But maybe that’s how they feel.”

“A perfect trap. Would you like a biscuit, then?” Eric asks. “I have jelly.”

“I’d love one. I’ll make tea.”

They talk until it is nearly time for Jack to begin preparing the books he needs for class, and the biscuits are so delicious he has two while Eric only eats one, and is offered the rest to bring home.

“Wait,” Jack says before Eric leaves. “I have -- why don’t you take this with you, for your office.”

He holds out the magazine he was reading last night.

“National Geographic?” Eric says, frowning. “That’s, that’s thoughtful of you.”

“There’s a map of the US, inside. It folds out, see. You said your office was empty, so I thought, I just thought you could put it on your wall.”

“Oh! Gosh! Thank you, I will,” Eric says.

“And,” Jack says, and hears Gibson’s voice in his head telling him to make friends, “stop by here whenever you’d like. No biscuits required.”

“But appreciated,” Eric says.

“Very appreciated.”

“Well, thank you, Jack,” says Eric. He stands and brushes off any crumbs that fell onto him while eating. “I think I will. Say hi to Camilla for me, will you.”

Eric leaves Jack with his bag of biscuits and a lingering smile. He’s thinking of perhaps switching out his breakfast toast with a biscuit or two, tomorrow morning.

 

* * *

 

By August Jack is back to full use of his limbs and his headaches are few and far between, and on the day his cast comes off, he decides to do something he’s always wanted to do.

“How do you feel about the name Sammy?” Jack says as he slides into the passenger seat of Bitty’s pick-up, where it was waiting in the parking lot of the practice rink where he met the team doctor. “Like as in Samwell?”

Bitty barely pauses but smiles as he says, “we’ve talked about that before and it’s a bit too on the nose, don’t you think. I understand subtlety isn’t your best quality, but that’s a little much even for you.”

“What if she was blonde and had big brown eyes just like you?”

“Oh, Jack, you’ve already adopted her, haven’t you.”

Jack’s phone pings, and he opens the text from Doctor Jeremy Fleetham, the team physician who’s been looking after Jack and who took his cast off, to show Bitty a picture of a tiny little yellow-eared border collie. “I haven’t confirmed anything yet, but look, Jeremy’s dog had puppies and he was showing me pictures and I saw her and thought, you know, we could take her, when she’s ready.”

“So you fell in love and thought she’d fit right into your pet-free apartment building.”

“Oh,” Jack says, “fuck,” with feeling. Sammy the dog stares up at him with round, glittering eyes from his phone as Bitty starts the engine and makes his way out onto the street. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Clearly,” Bitty says. He starts the car. “She’s beautiful, but Jack, it’s just not possible right now. Now talk to me about how it feels to have your arm back.”

So they do, because it is so fucking good to be able to use it properly again, though Jeremy says he still has to be relatively gentle with it. It feels weak and small compared to his other arm and that is uniquely awful -- Jack feels unbalanced, unsteady, but he has a weight training plan ready to go made with his physiotherapist and trainers, and now he has easily-measurable goals to achieve. And Bitty, who has gotten somewhat out of shape since leaving Samwell and its hockey team behind, swears he’s going to join him in training with his own plan.

Jack cooks supper that night -- “You finally have use of your arms so you bet your nice round ass you’re cooking for me tonight,” Bitty says once they get home -- and as he’s firing up the small barbeque on their balcony he thinks about Sammy the dog, and the no-trade clause on last year’s ten-year contract extension which will hopefully take him to retirement at 37, and he thinks, strangely, about his father.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says when he sits down to his plate of turkey burger and homefries and asparagus.

Bitty sighs. “Yeah, I think I know what about.”

“And?”

“You really want that dog, huh.”

“Don’t you? And, well, we’ve been in this place four years now, and you know, you always said it isn’t really great for us.”

And Bitty is right about that. The kitchen is nice and big, which is the main feature that had sold Jack on it back in his senior year though at the time he couldn’t quite understand why marble countertops and a full walk-in pantry were so important to him, but there’s no dining room to accommodate guests, only an extended island-table hybrid for eating, which Bitty detests. The balcony has a nice view, but Bitty would like a bigger grill and maybe some seating and they both want a garden, and Jack, really, would like a hot tub for his sore muscles post-game. The pool table hasn’t been touched in at least a year and the guest bedroom is small. When sighing over the ideal in the spring with his work spread out all over the kitchen and scented markers and star-shaped stickers finding their way to odd places like cabinets and the faucet, Bitty said he would like an office in which he could do all his lesson planning and correcting and vlogging, and Jack thinks a weight room would be nice. So they’ve talked about it, their perfect home, in bits and pieces throughout the years, and Jack has always collected these details and filed them away in his mind somewhere for -- for later.

“I did always say that. And she is pretty darn cute.”

Maybe later is now. He really would love that dog.

“And you know, you asked me in July about kids, and I know that’s like, way in the future, and I’d have to come out and we could get married first, but now that you’ve graduated for good and you have a job maybe it’s time to start thinking about it.”

Bitty, who was about to take a bite of his burger, sets it down with a ginger hand and stares. “Are you -- did you just -- okay. First of all, I never asked you about kids,” he says. “I mean, we’ve mentioned it in the past, the name thing especially, but I don’t think we like, sat down and had a conversation about it seriously. Did we?”

“What? No, I swear we did. Must have been when we went to Georgia for the fourth.”

“Do me a favour and take me back to that. Maybe I had a bit too much to drink that day.”

Jack frowns and stabs through a piece of asparagus with his fork. “We were on the porch swing.”

“Go on.”

“And you asked me if I’d ever thought about it, having kids, and I said --”

He’d said no, hadn’t he? But that was a lie, it must have been, because he has thought about it. Of course he has. They both love kids, and Jack knows Bitty would make a wonderful loving father, and since they’ve been together he’s always imagined a family as part of his future. Little children running around, climbing over him, learning to skate, and bake, and how to speak French. Why wouldn’t he say yes? Only, he does remember this conversation -- a humid night where his shirt stuck to his back as he leaned against the swing and mosquitos buzzing around his ears and soft laughter and a kiss against his neck and a -- but no, that’s not right either. There in his mind he sees a golden wedding band shining pink in the setting sun. On his finger now there is no ring. Not even a Cup ring, not yet, which he’d rather not dwell on at the moment.

“Jack?”

“Maybe I dreamed it.”

Bitty hums and chews on his burger for a moment and from the open balcony doors there comes the sound of sirens of an ambulance driving by below. Even after all these years of city life, it’s a sound which always makes Bitty flinch, like he does now.

“Maybe we should talk to Jeremy.”

“About the, the dream?” He almost says false memory but it’s not like he was in a coma. He hit his head, is all. As hockey players do.

The scar on his left hand is raised and has a rubbery texture to it, and it’s become habit for Jack to rub it without thinking about it, but he focuses on the feeling now. The nerves-endings are ruined and he feels nothing there anymore. How strange it is to have a part of your body so disconnected from the rest. He lives and works in his body and for his body every day and he doesn’t even know the back of his hand anymore.

“About the puppy. I don’t think she’ll be ready to leave her mama yet for another few weeks, you know, which might, it might give us time.”

That night they talk about it, what they want in a house and in a family, in bed with soft voices with gentle laughter and frequent sighs and breaks for kisses, and Jack says the next morning he’ll call Jeremy for the puppy, Tater for his real estate agent’s number from when he bought a house last year, and his lawyer for the proper NDAs. It’ll be difficult, he thinks, to view houses with Bitty because though they’ve been doing a less than great job on hiding lately they’re still not out. But there is, tucked tight all around him, the hope that it’ll be worth it. The certainty, even. Because this is something Jack is sure about.

Though, when he closes his eyes, all he sees is that night again, and he's suddenly less sure. It’s starkly vivid, unlike any dream he’s ever had, so real that even now laying in this familiar, warm bed, it’s hardly even a memory. He smells freshly-cut grass and he feels the sweat dripping down his neck into his shirt collar, and he tastes sun-warmed skin against his lips. He feels the itching of a mosquito bite somewhere on his elbow. Only across the street he sees something wrong, like a glitch in a video game -- the lacrosse house from Samwell, but painted pale yellow instead of brown and with hedges and a flower garden and a hydrangea bush out front and an old, old car in the driveway, like the kind in the pictures pinned up in Eric’s father’s shed. Bitty’s father’s shed. Above the John Deere ride-on mower, right next to the picture of Rhonda Vincent the bluegrass singer in a semi-revealing, very green outfit. Bitty rolls his eyes at it every time they go in there to get something from the deep-freeze or the back-up fridge which holds mostly beer and sweets, and it always makes Jack laugh.

An old car, an old house, and laughter, but the wrong laughter, he realizes now, and then he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

In late August Patty from across the street and her husband Lionel buy a new car, a gleaming maroon 1951 Ford Country Squire with real wood panelling, and Camilla sighs longingly at it while packing their bags into the trunk of their 46 Chevrolet Stylemaster on a Friday afternoon before a weekend trip to Providence to see her sister. But she says nothing about it, only asks if Jack’s sure the windows in the house are shut tight and the door is locked, which means he has to go and check.

When he comes back out Eric is standing next to the car and shielding his eyes from the sunlight as he talks to Camilla. They are the same height and Jack almost laughs outright at it. He’s never noticed before, as they both, to him, feel tall. Possibly because of the amount of space Camilla takes up in his life and Eric in any room he enters -- Jack’s office quite often, as of late.

“Providence! I’ve never been,” Eric is saying as Jack walks up. “But I’d love to visit some day.” His voice sounds off, the cadence of his words muted, and Jack frowns, unable to pinpoint what it is.

“I grew up there,” says Camilla. It’s clipped, and she turns away. “Jack, we best set off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, of course you want to get going,” Eric says. “Will you be back for Monday’s afternoon tea, Doctor Zimmermann?”

It’s become, strangely, part of his routine. Eric is kind and they talk about their lessons and their students and Eric’s baking and it doesn’t go any deeper than that but it’s easy that way. Jack has not had a friendship so simple in a long time, or even a friendship at all.

“Yes,” Jack says.

“No,” Camilla says at the same time.

“We’re coming back Sunday.”

“I thought maybe you could come play a tennis match or two with me on Monday afternoon.”

“What? What about Patty from across the street?”

“She has a hair appointment.”

“I never play tennis with you.”

“But you used to.”

“Well!” Eric says, and Jack startles. “Have a safe trip now, you hear? Jack, I’ll see you next week sometime, I suppose.” He waves and walks on down the sidewalk to his house and Jack can do nothing but open Camilla’s car door for her and step around to sit in the driver’s side.

“Camilla,” Jack says. He doesn’t start the car but he doesn’t yet know what to say. She is lovely when he looks at her, in the sun with her hair shining gold and curled just so, and she is always lovely, but just now she is also frowning, and has her arms crossed.

“I don’t want you spending any time with that man,” she says.

“Clearly,” Jack says. That at least he’s understood. “He’s a colleague. We teach in the same department. His office is four doors down from mine.”

“None of that requires Monday afternoon tea.”

“Christ, Camilla, you barely know the man. He’s nice. What’s wrong with me having tea with him?”

Her jaw is tight and she turns to face forward. “Start the car,” she says.

He does, and backs out of the driveway carefully, and she says nothing until they’ve left the neighbourhood and turned onto Main Street, where the town has lined the kerb with potted plants for the summer and where women walk by doing their shopping before the weekend, stamping out their cigarettes with their delicate pumps and pulling along their children behind them. Samwell is a good town, and Jack prefers it over Boston and Montréal. It’s calmer, for one, but still there is life to it, a vibrancy he can enjoy from the periphery. He liked Providence, where he defended both his Master’s and his Doctorate, and where he of course met Camilla at a co-ed social between Pembroke College, the women’s college, and Brown College, but the city wasn’t quite right, not for him.

If he really concentrates, and at times late at night lying in bed he tries, he can still hear the music the band was playing in the church basement not far from Brown’s campus and smell its mustiness and the sweat coming from those who were dancing. Not Jack -- he’d been leaning against a wall opposite the band and the dancers because the whole affair made him nervous. He can’t remember now why he’d even gone, but someone must have asked him, repeatedly. In any case that’s where he first saw her, two or three feet away from him against the same wall. She hadn’t been dancing because she didn’t think it was appropriate for single women, and also, she whispered to him in between songs, she didn’t know how to. She’d made him laugh with that, and so he’d asked her to lunch the next day. And then they’d just never stopped.

He’d asked her, once, if she regretted quitting school soon after they met. She’d been in her third year of her Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies, and, uncharacteristically, without really any plan for after. Jack had been her plan, he supposes, and before Jack, she might have imagined someone like Jack. She’d said no, she hadn’t regretted anything, that she had everything she wanted. He wonders if that’s still the case, if now, sitting here, with her arms crossed and staring out at the busy streets, she wishes she could have done something differently. He hopes not.

“I do not want you to spend time with him,” she says when they’re finally nearing city limits, “because he is a homosexual.” She whispers the last word like someone could hear her and Jack keeps his eyes on the road as he takes a moment to understand.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jack says finally. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“He good as told us the other day,” she says.

“He said no such thing.”

“God, Jack, for such an educated man you sure can be a dunce sometimes. Patty from across the street agrees with me, anyway.”

“She agrees that I’m a dunce?”

“No! She agrees,” she says, and again, whispers, “that Bittle is a homosexual.”

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“You’re just being deliberately obtuse, now.”

Jack clenches his hand around the steering wheel in an attempt to calm them from the shaking they’ve begun, like he’s losing control of the conversation and of his body all at once. A familiar sensation for all he’ll never be able to get used to it.

“Someone baking biscuits doesn’t count as evidence. I’m not going to stop having tea with him, for God’s sake, Camilla, just because you think he might be a, a whatever. He’s a good friend.”

At this she snorts, cruelly, and they don’t say anything else until the reach Providence.

In fact they don’t speak of it again, not throughout their time at Louise and Johnny’s where Louise is sickly and getting round and Beatrice asks Jack all kinds of difficult questions and the twins squabble and cry and climb onto him and Camilla cleans the house and cooks and bakes and goes out to buy things for the new baby and for the others, and they don’t speak of it on the drive back, nor the next day when Jack comes home from his classes to change into his tennis clothes and walk to the campus courts for a few games. They don’t even speak of it on Tuesday when Jack arrives in the evening and throws onto the table a paper bag of blueberry scones and says, “Eric says hello.” The scones go stale as no one touches them for days and Camilla throws them out onto back lawn for the birds.

By September the new teacher’s college program has become so popular there are discussions about whether or not the male professors should be allowed to teach so many women at once. Eric is silent for once on this issue though he has been vocal on most others since he began coming to the faculty meetings, but in the end it’s decided there’s nothing they can do and the subject is dropped.

They’re walking back to Jason Street after the meeting when Jack asks. It’s overcast and the wind is picking up and there aren’t very many students walking about as they normally do nor children playing in the streets -- though that might be because school hasn’t finished yet, at this time of afternoon. It’s been years since Jack has known the schedules of regular families. Perhaps he never really did.

“How did you get out of conscription,” he asks. Eric stops walking and leans against the railing of the bridge to look down at the water.

“Jack, I ain’t that old, you know,” Eric says. Jack realizes that his voice had sounded strange that time with Camilla and most other times among others because he’d been flattening out his accent. “When I first turned 18 I was registered of course but I was almost always injured or something back then and then I went to school so they couldn’t take me. In all honesty I don’t think I would have ever done a graduate degree if it wasn’t for that. But it worked out, didn’t it? I’m here.”

“Injured?” Jack asks. “Injured how?”

Eric shrugs. “Broken arm once, a few cracked ribs, swollen eye. What about you?”

“Oh. That’s, um, well, I’m Canadian, you know,” Jack says.

“Yes, Jack, I do know.”

“Well by the time it all started in 44 I was already in the States. My father went though, he volunteered in 39. He’d been a hockey player before and then had taught in some schools for a few years before going to the front.”

“He ever come back?” Eric asks. He looks into the river and not at Jack.

“No,” Jack says. “Declared missing in action less than six months later. My mother never recovered. She died not long after.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Yes,” Jack says, “of course. Every day.”

“You know,” Eric says. He bends down to pick up a rock, big in his palm, and throws it into the darkening river as far as he can. “It’s odd we still think of those who’ve left us or even those we’ve left behind, as, as family, the people who are dead too, they’re still family despite it all, but not the people who -- who we haven’t met yet, or who haven’t been born yet.”

Jack watches the stone fall into the water but its ripples are lost to the waves from the wind.

“You’re saying family isn’t -- it isn’t confined to time? I’m not sure that’s, well, I don’t know about that.”

Eric shrugs. “You never met someone and you thought, oh, I feel like I’ve known you forever, or I could, or I will?”

“That sounds complicated,” he says. The sentiment feels a bit too fanciful really. Certainly Jack has not felt any such thing with Camilla, if that’s what Eric is implying. “What about your parents?”

“Still back in Georgia.”

“And do you miss them?”

“There’s a question,” Eric says, and begins to walk again, leaving Jack to hitch his bag higher on his shoulder and catch up. “How did Camilla like the scones?”

“She -- she didn’t have any.”

It takes Jack by surprise when Eric laughs.

“No? Goodness, your wife sure doesn’t like me,” Eric says.

It’s unfortunate, Jack thinks, because they would probably get along, if it wasn’t or that. They could exchange recipes and talk about television and new books and gossip in ways that Jack can’t for either of them. Eric is kind and Camilla is good and they could get along. They are -- they are the two most important people in his life at the moment. Which is -- a thought that unsettles Jack and confuses him, despite its truth, or perhaps because of it.

“Would you happen to know why,” Eric says.

“She says, well, she thinks you’re a homosexual.”

Again he laughs. It is strangely loud above the wind rushing in Jack’s ears.

“Does she! And what do you think?”

Eric is walking faster than his short legs and long torso should permit but Jack keeps up.

“I don’t think anything. I told her she was being ridiculous,” he says. They turn onto Jason Street as the first drops fall. The pavement has that smell, that heavy hot-tar before-rain smell you can never quite recall after the sky’s opened up enough to wash it away, and it fills Jack with restlessness, a nervousness under his skin. It’s the unpredictability of the weather, he supposes. At least the rain will be good for the lawn.

Eric’s usually slicked-back hair has been curling in the humidity, and now with the light rain that’s begun a piece falls onto his forehead. Jack stares at it for a moment before realizing they’re stopped in front of Eric’s house. There was no time this year for a garden so the yard is neat and empty, thanks to Jack lending Eric his lawn mower once a week, but he’s been talking about digging and tilling one for next year, so he can have some vegetables.

“Thank you for walking with me, Jack,” Eric says.

“Make sure your shutters are closed,” says Jack.

When Jack goes home he kisses Camilla on the top of her head and she says, “get off me, you wet dog,” and “how was your day,” and they still don’t speak.

 

* * *

 

The headaches are back and with them orders to stay off the ice as much as possible. Jack negotiates with the physicians and coaches to let him practice in a no-contact jersey -- he’s the goddamn captain for fuck’s sake, he needs to be with his team, but Jack will be on the bench for the preseason games until further notice. Everyone says he just needs time and rest but time is not something he can buy and rest is not something he feels he can afford.

As a result of his relapse reporters are rabid and he can barely step out of his apartment to go visit Snowy on the fourth floor without being accosted. The house hunt is postponed, and Tater takes Sammy the pup for now, and two weeks into September Bitty has begun leaving the apartment so early and coming home so late as to avoid getting caught he just starts spending most school nights at Jack’s parents’ condo, which is just as close to his school but is at least more private.

He has too much energy with nowhere to put it. There’s only so much strategizing he can do before his head begins to hurt too much, the bright fluorescent lights of the rink are hard on his eyes, leaving his place to work out is difficult with the media following him everywhere, and fuck, he misses having Bits around. Being away from the ice for too long periods of time leaves him antsy and vulnerable and feeling useless, but he can handle it. He has before, and he probably will have to again before he retires. But being away from Bitty makes him miserable.

“I know, baby, I know,” Bitty says when Jack tells him this. As he’s in his truck on his way to the condo using the bluetooth function Bitty’s voice is a bit distant and unclear. “My students are noticing that I’m not -- I’m not at my best, let’s say.”

“What did they really say?” Jack says. He’s lying on his bed with his lights turned off and the curtains shut though it’s not even 5pm yet.

“Well, Brayden, you know, I told you about him last week, the one who shaved off his right eyebrow, he asked me,” Bitty says, then laughs, “he asked me who pissed in my cornflakes. God, I could barely keep a straight face long enough to tell him he shouldn’t say that.”

“At least he didn’t tell you, like, you needed to get your dick sucked or anything.”

“I’m honestly surprised he didn’t. They’re at that age.”

In unison they pause and sigh.

“It’ll die down soon,” Bitty says. “They’ll get bored by you hiding out and I’ll be back home in no time.”

“I hope so.”

Jack’s fully intending to get up and make some food for himself after he hangs up -- he’s been trying to make better portions because his body hasn’t adjusted yet to a lower calorie intake and he’s always hungry -- but instead falls asleep as soon as he says goodbye.

There’s a moment when he wakes up with a visceral sense he’s on the wrong side of the bed, that he’s in the wrong place, that his sheets smell wrong, the texture of his blankets is wrong, that his entire body is wrong, and everything is just goddamn wrong. The pain in his head is so intense and the nausea so sudden he can’t even sit up to turn his lamp on and even if he could he’s not sure he’d know where it is, if he could find it in his disorientation. It’s terrifying.

Then his phone rings, the sudden artificial light blinding, and his muscles remember what to do with that. They must not be useless after all.

“Eric?” he says when he answers. He hopes he’s right -- he couldn’t look at the screen long enough to check.

“Jack,” Bitty says. “I know we just talked a couple hours ago but I decided I’m coming over tonight. I just, I can’t do this right now, so I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Oh,” Jack says. He breathes. Of course that’s what was wrong. Bitty isn’t here. “Thank god.”

When he touches his face in the dark after Bitty hangs up he realizes he’s been crying. It’s the first time he’s cried since the accident and he doesn’t even know why.

In the coming weeks there are more moments like that, where he doesn’t know where the plates go in his kitchen, where his foot looks for the clutch in his truck even though he’s never had a standard before and indeed has never learned how to drive one, where he wakes up on a Monday morning convinced he forgot to do something important the night before and can’t fucking pinpoint what but he spends the rest of the day with that feeling of something unfinished following him. He’s as good at hiding it as he has been about everything else that he’s ever had to -- the anxiety, the drugs, Bitty -- which is to say not that good. No one mentions it though, perhaps for fear of tipping off the coaches and med staff who’ve given him the go-ahead to play in their first regular season game on October 6th in Toronto.

A profound sense of uncertainty and awkwardness surrounds him almost daily by now, like when he first hit puberty and no longer knew how to live in his own body anymore, or when he moved to Samwell and didn’t know anyone and was learning how to be with other people again, and how to be alone too, for the first time. Bitty has come back home mostly permanently by now as the reporters have moved on to the next scandal. Tater brings over Sammy as much as he can, which helps and settles the vague itchiness under Jack’s skin for a little while, but never for long. He feels like he’s living outside of himself, looking down at his life from above, and at night he doesn’t dream, only falls into the nothing again. But at least he can play, and at least Bitty isn’t afraid of being home. They begin looking for houses again.

“A gated community would be nice,” Jack says the night before he leaves for Canada. He’s sore from practice but it’s a good sore, and he barely feels any pain in his arm anymore. “For the privacy. Maybe in Tater’s neighbourhood.”

“Hm.” Bitty’s laying on Jack on the couch with his laptop on his lap, scrolling through a real estate website. “Let’s go for a drive around there when you come back from Toronto.” He’s got a speck of paint right below his ear because they’ve got him teaching 8th grade art as well as Social Studies. He calls Lardo a lot for advice and lesson ideas.

Jack nearly doesn’t make it to Toronto at all. He decides to drive himself to the airport early because Bitty’s still at work and said goodbye in the morning, but instead of following the familiar road to Warwick he instead finds himself at the other end of town, parked on the kerb in front of a house he recognizes like when a word is on the tip of your tongue and you just can’t find it in your mind. It’s like he wakes up there. He barely remembers the drive -- he certainly doesn’t know how he made it here and why, and when he turns his truck off he gasps for breath as if he’s been underwater. Fuck, god, what is he doing here?

Where is he supposed to be?

The house is old and small and needs a coat of paint or two to cover up the dirty, peeling white, and there’s a children’s bicycle out front, purple with training wheels on it, and an old black Hyundai Accent with its rear fender dented out front. It’s when a school bus stops a few houses up the street and lets out a few children that Jack notices his breathing has picked up and he is blinking back tears. Panicking. He’s lost. He’s frightened. His head hurts. He’s supposed to be somewhere, doing something, and instead he’s sitting in this -- this truck, watching a child walk toward the house he’s parked before. As he watches her ignore him and go up to the door a woman comes out and -- his breathing eases, and just like that, he can think again. He knows her. This might be where he’s supposed to be after all.

She ushers the little girl inside then walks down to his truck and taps on the window. He fumbles for a moment to find the proper button -- there’s a button, right next to the window -- and she says, “Jack? What the fuck are you doing?”

The swearing stops him for a moment, and he tries to find an explanation.

“I -- Camilla, I don’t know,” he says.

“How did you -- why are you here? How did you know where to find me?”

“I don’t know I got here,” he says. “Where -- is that Beatrice? How is she liking school?”

“Are you high right now? Jack, I swear to fuck. You’re freaking me out.”

“I’m not high, I’m -- I’m lost.”

She stares, then seems to decide something, and holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

“My, my telephone?”

“Your cellphone, yes, I’m calling Bitty.”

“Who’s Bitty?”

“Uh, Eric Bittle? Your boyfriend? I follow his friends-only instagram, Jack. You know that.” She frowns and opens her mouth once, twice, then says, “aren’t you supposed to be playing tomorrow? I saw a news article that they were playing you. Like, are you alright to play right now?”

Oh. Oh. Fuck, fuck, Toronto, hockey, the airport. Right. Fuck, he’s so far away, he’s going to be late, he’s the captain, they’re not going to let him play, fuck, fuck, fuck...

“Shit!” He smacks the steering wheel and it honks. “You’re right, fuck, I have to go, I’m sorry, I’ll call you later.”

“Jack? Jack, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry, Camilla, I’m going to be late. I promise I’ll call you and explain.” Though he doesn’t know how, really, he feels now he has to. He starts his truck and says, “I’m sorry,” once more, then speeds all the way to the airport, where he’s only a few minutes late, and no one mentions it, maybe because they’re all afraid of getting him relegated to the bench again.

He texts Bitty _i love you_ before they take flight because he doesn’t want to forget that ever again.

 

* * *

 

In late October when the trees are bare, the lawn mower’s been put away for the year, and it’s cold enough that Camilla and Patty from across the street have begun using the indoor gymnasium for their matches, Jack volunteers to join the department’s ad hoc committee for organizing the annual Humanities conference and banquet, which takes place in mid-November. It’s not anything he’s done before, as he is always very busy this time of year with students and mid-term exams, but Eric was put in charge of the banquet portion of the event and asks, with molasses cookies and what Jack would qualify as a pout if pressed, if he can help out. Jack says yes before he even realizes the words are leaving his mouth. There isn’t much for him to do, in any case: type up minutes of committee meetings, reserve some rooms on-campus for the conference speakers, and be willing to listen to Eric agonize about the menu over tea in the afternoons in between classes.

Camilla, for once, is happy for Jack to be doing this, as one of the speakers is an old professor of hers from Pembroke and she is looking forward to sitting with him at the banquet, something she wouldn’t have been permitted to do if Jack wasn’t on the organizing committee. As it is Eric’s given them a seat at the head table and she begins planning her outfit two weeks in advance. It’s nice to see her excited over something, in a way she hasn’t been since Louise was pregnant with the twins. She even condescends to agree to Jack asking Eric over for Thanksgiving supper the week after the banquet.

“I suppose he doesn’t have anybody here,” she says at breakfast one morning the week before the conference. “And he can keep Louise’s children occupied.”

“Oh, good, I’ll let him know,” Jack says. “Just tell me what it is you want him to bring. Some pie, perhaps, or dinner rolls.”

“No need,” Camilla says. “Patty from across the street is doing dessert.”

“He’s going to bring something regardless so you may as well have a say in what.”

“Fine. Dinner rolls would be lovely.”

As the banquet looms ever nearer, Eric begins to show signs of stress and Jack tries to offer such platitudes as “it’s going to be fine” and “you’ve done all you can”. They don’t seem to be doing much good.

“Grace under pressure, aren’t you,” Eric says after one such occasion.

“Oh no,” Jack says, earnest. They’re walking to residence services to confirm the room reservations because the conference is in two days. “If I was you I’d be every ounce as nervous.”

Strangely Eric laughs, which seems to help more than anything else Jack has done on purpose.

But the sun rises bright and shining on the day of, which seems to be an omen, and the conference goes well. Humanities students, Jack and Eric’s included, gather en masse to hear the speakers, and Jack is satisfied with the questions they ask and the notes they take, though he warned his classes that he would be testing them on the subjects later, which may have helped their level of interest. Camilla accompanies Jack to the lectures and enjoys herself very much, even raising her hand twice by the end of the last conference to add to the discussion.

“Wait until I tell Patty from across the street,” she says after, smugly. “She thought it’d be silly for me to come because I never finished college.”

“I’m glad you came,” Jack says.

Camilla and Jack go home to change before driving to the dining hall, where the banquet is taking place, and when they get there they see it’s been decorated with crepe paper and flowers and has had a stage placed at one end of it for speeches and music later on, when the tables will be moved around to leave room for dancing. It looks like something out of a picture, Jack thinks, like the ones Camilla watches on the television.

Eric is at the entrance directing seating arrangements in a suit with his hair oiled back precisely, a clipboard in his hand and looking harried. He’s frowning down at the board and ticking something off with a pencil.

“Eric, where do we go?” Jack says when he and Camilla approach arm in arm.

“Oh, Jack, thank goodness, I need you to go wait for Pastor Mullen outside and help him inside, you know with his hip how it is, we just can’t have him falling over before he can bless the meal,” he says, then looks up. His shoulders relax when he does and he smiles. “Gosh. I’m sorry. Hello. That dress is a nice colour for you, Camilla, and it just matches perfectly with Jack’s tie.”

Jack looks down at his tie, then at Camilla’s dress, whose pale blue delicate material drapes over her softly. “I hadn’t noticed,” he says.

“Yes, darling, I picked them specifically for that,” she says. Inside the cafeteria the band is playing some quiet, wordless music, and Jack can hear talking and laughter and glasses clinking. There’s a bar at one end, he knows, though he won’t be partaking in that.

“Jack?” Eric says. “Can you go --”

He leaves Camilla to find their seats under Eric’s direction while he goes to wait for the old pastor who oversees the campus chapel, and when he comes back Camilla already has a glass of wine in her hand and is speaking with Joseph Bizinski who has his office next to Jack’s.

“Jack! Did you know Joseph here used to sing opera?”

He’d guessed, based on all the singing.

Gibson the department head finds him soon after.

“Jack, I'd say it’s been a resounding success, wouldn't you?” His cheeks are red and he’s got a glass of something dark in his hand, and already a stain of some kind on his shirt. He’s laughing.

They sit at the head table, and the night moves on.

“Jack, sweetheart, I’d love for you to meet my old Professor Staunton, what was it, Public Administration 102? I think I told you about it, remember, last week?”

“Jack Zimmermann, was it? I’ve heard good things about your teaching methods.”

“Jack, can you go tell Gibson we’re going to be doing his speech first instead of second? I’m just running a bit behind.”

“Jack follows hockey, Jack, what do you think about the Habs this season so far?”

“Jack, have you seen Patty? She went off to the bathroom with Camilla a while ago but I haven’t seen her since.”

“Jack Zimmermann, for his help and support and his countless cups of tea...”

“Jack, you’re Canadian, aren’t you? What are your thoughts on those old-age pensions St Laurent’s introducing?”

“Jack, would you like me to get you a drink?”

“Jack, how’s the food?”

“Jack, did you enjoy today’s lectures?”

Then:

“Jack, are you alright? Should we go get -- I don’t think -- yes, okay. I’ll be here if -- okay, yes, the back door is open.”

“Eric?” Jack says. It's Eric's voice. “Where’s --” And then there’s Camilla’s face in front of him, concerned. He focuses on her and ignores all the rest -- the noise, the music, the questions. Just her. It eases his breathing, and he reaches out for her hands.

“Just me,” she says, like she knows his thoughts. In fact he thinks she often does. “Let’s go outside for some air.”

He follows her out and the cold hits him as soon as they cross the threshold. The noisiness is left behind, and all he hears is the band playing Dream a Little Dream through an open window at the other end of the brick wall. They’re in a small courtyard-like space with cigarette butts littering the ground, which he takes to mean it’s where the women who work in the kitchen and the cleaning ladies come out to smoke.

“Now, is that better?” Camilla says. She’s got her shawl tugged tightly around her so he shrugs off his suit jacket to put around her shoulders.

He is better now. He hadn’t even realized he was having trouble before.

“Yes, thank you,” he says. He opens his arms for her to fall into so she can warm herself, and together they stand and breathe.

“I think the band was playing this song that night in that church basement, remember?” she says. When he looks at her in the light of the open window he sees her eyes are wet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Come on, dance with me a little,” she says.

“But you can’t dance.”

“Neither can you, but we’re alone, aren’t we?”

It’s not so much dancing as it is swaying in the dim light and holding each other closely, for warmth and comfort, as she cries into his shoulder and dampens his shirt. He doesn’t mind but he doesn’t quite know what to do, so he just keeps turning in circles with her.

The song ends, eventually, but she doesn’t step away and he doesn’t move.

“Patty told me,” she says, “in the bathroom earlier, she said she’s pregnant. Or, she thinks she is, but you know, a woman always knows.”

“That’s, I’m happy for them,” he says. “Is that why you were crying?”

“Oh, Jack, I think I’m crying for a lot of reasons.”

Nearly a decade ago now when his mother’s health first began to deteriorate following the loss of his father, she had cried a lot. Each time had been more difficult than the last and he’d never learned how to comfort her, or really how to comfort himself. Camilla has never been the kind of woman to cry at everything, and for that he’s been grateful, though he knows it’s a selfish sentiment. He wishes now it wasn’t so because all he can do is tighten his arms around her and kiss her head despite his uncertainty.

“I think we should go home,” Camilla says. She steps away from him and looks up, cheeks tear-streaked and eyes red. “I know you’re feeling better but I -- you look tired. I don’t think they’ll mind us leaving before the end.”

“I told Eric I’d stay to help him clean up and see everyone out, but you go ahead and I should be home soon.”

He digs his car key out of his pocket and hands it to her. She stares at it for a moment, then closes her fingers around it.

“Oh. Well. If Eric needs you.”

“It’s just, I can’t just leave before it’s over. I told him I would stay.”

“Right. I’ll just walk around to the front, then. Goodnight.”

She shrugs off his jacket and hands it back.

“Goodnight,” he says. He goes to kiss her but she’s already turned and begun to walk away.

 

* * *

 

It was inevitable that someone would notice the fact that he’s been losing more time and -- hallucinating, if that’s the word for it, the vague, out-of-focus images that come up in his mind and the way he feels like a stranger in his own life now for no reason he can come up with, but Jack didn’t think it would be like this, not by a child he barely knows before his doctors or his boyfriend or his team. It’s a snowy early December evening when Bitty’s at the school making sets for a holiday show his kids are putting on next week. But as soon as Camilla steps into the apartment, shaking out her wet mittens and stomping her feet on the mat, and Jack sees Beatrice beside her, he knows he’s been caught out. Beatrice’s eyes are wide and she tips her head to stare at him, then says, “what do I call you here?”

“Uh.” He laughs a little in discomfort. “I’m Jack, remember me? We met at the grocery store.”

“No, we met at my house,” Beatrice says.

“You saw me last month? When I was talking to your aunt?”

Then, it’s like he feels a weight in his arms and when he looks down he is holding a baby, swaddled tightly in a soft pink blanket with a tuft of black hair at the top of her mottled head. There’s a sensation of rocking, like the memory of a chair, and when he looks up again the moment has passed, and Beatrice the five-year-old is staring at him, and Camilla is speaking.

“...bring Bee along. Louise got asked to do a double-shift at the restaurant at the last minute and Johnny’s still at the garage.”

He blinks and tries to smile like Bitty does when they have guests over. “Of course it’s fine. Come in, come in, I’ve got some tea and pie if you want some, we can sit in the kitchen.”

They sit and eat and make small talk until their plates are empty and Camilla’s stopped Beatrice from licking hers to great pouting.

“Our dog Toby at home likes licking plates,” Beatrice says.

“Yeah?” says Jack. “I almost had a dog once but he had to go and stay at a friend’s house for a while and he liked it so much he decided to stay.”

“Oh?” from Camilla. She’s leaning forward with her chin in her palm and looking at him with genuine interest, something he always appreciated from her. She and Shitty had been the first people at Samwell that didn’t make him feel boring, back when they met at an athlete mixer their first week.

Jack sighs, because it makes him sad to talk about, but takes out his phone to show her new pictures of Sammy anyway. He brought it up, after all. “We’re not allowed pets in this place but it just took too long to find a house, so Tater, you know Alexei Mashkov, he has her. I mean we obviously go see her as much as we can but it’s been like, four months now, so I’d hate to ask him to give her back to us if we finally found one.”

Beatrice takes his phone and laughs delightedly at each picture she swipes through. “I love her,” she declares. “She’s so small!”

“I didn’t know you were looking to buy a house,” Camilla says. “I mean, Bitty hasn’t posted anything about it.”

“It’s just,” he says, and makes a frustrated sound he can’t help, “we want a house so that when I come out we can have that, that privacy you know, so I can close my gate and not have reporters camping out on the front lawn, but buying a house with Bitty is difficult because we’re not out. We have to go see the houses in the daytime with neighbours around, get the homeowners and real estate agents to sign NDAs and get our lawyer involved, and then there’s issues with ownership because we’re not married or anything, not to mention it’s all public record anyway even if we did manage to keep it all hush hush.”

“Sounds complicated.”

He runs his scarred hand over his face. “And then with the injury, and Bitty’s new job, it just hasn’t been a priority, you know? We would have come out a while ago and avoided all this but it never felt like the right time, and now Bitty doesn’t want to jeopardize his spot at the school, and I understand obviously, but we just feel like we’re stuck right now. I’m stuck.”

His mouth shuts with a click when he realizes how much he’s been talking, and Camilla smiles fondly at him. Throughout this Beatrice has been looking at him, having returned his phone to his hand, and he’s oddly aware of her gaze in a way that makes him more uncomfortable than he usually is with children.

“You didn’t even say the word hockey once in all that,” Camilla says. “The Jack I last saw four years ago wouldn’t even recognize you.”

“I -- four years? That can’t be right,” Jack says. “I feel like I’ve seen you more than that.”

Camilla raises an eyebrow. “Not counting that weird encounter last month, which, by the way, I still haven’t gotten an explanation for even though I figure that’s why you asked me to come over, yeah, the last time we saw each other was when I went to watch your game against the Pens in what, 2017? It must have been, I was living in Philadelphia then.”

“I remember. Around this time of year, right?” They’d lost, if he recalls. They’d done that a lot that year.

“Yeah,” she says. “Listen, not that I don’t like catching up with you, but it’s just, is there something going on? You really freaked me out the other night.”

“It’s -- it’s fine, mostly. Well, you know I got concussed during the playoffs,” he says.

“Way I heard it you nearly died.”

“God, no, that was just the media blowing it out of proportion. It wasn’t so bad, really.”

“You had a big thing on your arm when I saw you,” Beatrice says. She gestures at her forearm. “Like a mummy.”

“A little like a mummy,” Jack says. “It was a cast.”

“A cast,” she says. “Why?”

“I broke my arm, because I was being mean on the ice. It hurt a lot. I try not to be so mean anymore.”

“Is that why you have a red scratch thing on your hand?”

“It's called a scar, look.”

He gives her his hand so she can touch the raised, rubbery skin, and she squeals when she pokes it.

“Jack,” says Camilla. “You were talking about the concussion?”

“That’s mostly it, though. Sometimes I have moments where I’m lost or -- I forget,” he says, because he doesn’t know how else to say it, then looks at Beatrice, who’s frowning at his hand now, and playing with his fingers. “I don’t know. It's weird. I haven’t told anybody --”

“Jack!”

“It’s fine when I’m on the ice! They don’t need to know unless it starts affecting me there.”

“And Bitty?”

“I just, I just don’t want to scare him. He’s doing good right now, and he works so hard.”

Bitty's going to notice soon, Jack thinks. As soon as his holiday vacation begins and he starts spending more time at home. Jack just figured he'd deal with it then. And it's not that he hasn’t worried about what would happen if he did have a fit while playing, but so far it’s been the place where he’s been the most at ease, the most comfortable, since they began. He wonders if it’s because it’s something that’s his own. That the other person doesn’t have, the other Jack, the one invading his mind, whether he’s real or not. Until now he didn’t really believe he was real. Until Beatrice.

“Where’s your ring?” she says now. When he looks again she’s not playing with his hand, but he feels the sensation still, tiny little fingers on his big ones, like he’s felt it dozens of times before. A speck of dirt flickers in and out of presence on her nose like a skipping CD.

“Beatrice,” Camilla says, “not everyone has a ring like your daddy does. Jack’s not married.”

“Mrs Cheng is,” she says. “Mr Cheng came to see us one day.”

“It’s her kindergarten teacher,” Camilla says. “Can I use your bathroom?”

He brings her to it and when he comes back he watches the little girl at his table flit from one Beatrice to another, wearing a dress and dark pigtails one second and jeans and a sweater and a braid the next, and it’s fucking terrifying, like something straight out of a horror movie, except she’s singing a song from the latest Frozen movie throughout it all and tracing invisible patterns on the tabletop, and really doesn’t cut a very threatening figure. Jack rubs his eyes and takes a breath but when he opens his eyes the kitchen has changed too, then it's gone back, then it's -- with every blink something is different, and it's making him dizzy. 

“Uh, how are you liking school? Do you like Mrs Cheng?” he asks when he sits across from her. There's not much else he can do. She stops humming and shrugs, and her form settles into the real Beatrice. Present-day Beatrice. Whether she's real or not -- he doesn't want to ask that question, maybe for fear of the answer, or for the other questions it begs.

“I like it. Sophie’s my best friend,” she says. “Mrs Cheng is funny. Why are you different here? You talk a lot more.”

“Uh. Ha. Do I? Well, different things happened to me there, I guess. Different people,” he says. It’s hard to look her in the eye when he’s saying these things so he plays with his hands and feels his scar. “I think. I don’t really know much about it. Do you?”

“A little. I have brothers there.” She says this with a grimace and such disdain he nearly laughs outright. “I like it better here so I don’t go there a lot.”

“You can choose when you go?”

“Uh huh. You can’t?”

“I’ve never tried,” he says. “I always just kind of let it happen.”

“Oh. Do you want to go?” She sits up on her knees and leans forward, and he bends forward a little so they’re the same height at the table.

“Not really. I like it better here too. I wish I could make it stop and just stay here.”

“How come? You’re married to Auntie Milla there and she said you’re not married to anyone here.”

“No, but can you keep a secret?”

“Yes!” she squeals. She’s so far onto the table she’s practically crawled on it, and he leans in close.

“I might marry somebody else here, one day. His name is Bitty. Do you know him? In the other place we call him Eric.”

She nods, her eyes wide. “He made us pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving!”

“Did he?” Jack laughs. “I don’t remember that. Here he made us apple pie.”

“I got to eat dessert two times and Mommy didn’t even find out.”

Jack gasps loudly for her. “Lucky you.”

When he glances out to the living room windows all he sees is snow, and stops himself from swearing out loud in front of Beatrice just in time. The stuff is coming down hard. He should have checked the weather before inviting Camilla. Instead he says nothing about it yet. She’s going to come back from the bathroom soon.

“Do you know how to make it stop?” he asks. “Going to the other place?”

“But what about Uncle Jack? What'll happen to him?”

Marty and George and Thirdy’s kids all call him Mononcle Jack, because Théo started it and it stuck, even with Princess, who’s the oldest of them. Bitty thinks it’s adorable, and Jack loves it, and even though he’s never been called Uncle Jack, he thinks he could love it as much. Maybe he does, in the other place, and just then he’s hit with a wave of sadness for Uncle Jack so powerful it makes him gasp for real this time. He’s glad he’s sitting down.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “I don’t know about Uncle Jack.”

“Does he want to marry Eric?”

“Maybe he would if he could. But he loves your Auntie Milla too, I think.”

Beatrice squints, crunching her face up, and Jack smiles. “That’s a hard one,” she says, very seriously.

“Jack,” comes Camilla’s voice from the small corridor, and she walks into the kitchen staring at her phone. “I just got a text from Louise. She says she’s stuck at the restaurant. Is it that bad out?”

Jack’s phone begins to ring and the letter B appears at the top of his screen.

“Turn the TV on and find the news, the remote’s on the -- yeah, there. I’m going to take this.” He swipes the screen and brings it to his ear. “Bits, what’s it like over there?”

“It’s pretty bad, honey. We checked online and it’s supposed to clear up around eleven but if it doesn’t I guess we’re sleeping on the guidance counsellor’s couches.”

Jack bites his lip as Beatrice hops down from her seat and goes to sit at the couch with her aunt. “I’ve got Camilla and her niece here but I don’t want them out on the roads.”

“What? Why are they there?”

“Just, just wanted to catch up. I guess we didn’t really plan ahead.”

Bitty sighs. “Too bad, I would have liked to see her too. Well, you can change the sheets in the guest room and put them in there for the night, if you don’t think it’s safe out there.”

It’s impossible to know which Jack looks at Beatrice, snuggled against Camilla, and which one says, “shouldn't risk it. Are you alright? You’re not alone, are you? Do you have blankets?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart, we have blankets from the nurse’s office and we let the principal know we’re still here. I guess we’ll be able to get more work done, huh.”

“Yeah. I still want you here, though.”

“I know.”

“I love you,” Jack says.

There’s a beat, and the scene changes before Jack’s eyes. He’s in a different kitchen, but one so achingly, longingly familiar, and is holding to his ear the receiver to a black rotary phone. He hears footsteps above his head, Camilla working quickly to pack their things so they can drive to Providence as soon as the storm lets up because Louise has gone into labour. Someone needs to watch the children.

“What?” Eric says. “What did you just say? Is Camilla there?”

In the distance he hears someone yell his name, over and over, but it’s like a dream, like a fog he can’t see through, and he can’t grasp it and keep it.

“Eric, are you still at the school?” Jack asks. His heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s going to jump out of his chest and onto the floor and

“I just told you I’m storm-stayed! Jack, what did you just say? Why did you say that?”

“I’ll be there soon,” he says.

Camilla is walking above him. Camilla is watching TV with Beatrice.

“Jack! Jack, what’s wrong. Baby. Jack? Where did you go?”

“I’ll be there soon, I said.”

“Oh, god, please don’t go out in the snow, please, Jack. I’ll be fine. I’ll be home tomorrow. I might even be home tonight. They’re cancelling school for the morning.”

Footsteps coming down the stairs. “Jack, did I just hear you were going somewhere?”

“I have to, Camilla.”

Beatrice says, “but it’s snowing!”

“Stay put, Mister Zimmermann,” from Bitty -- Eric -- it doesn’t matter. “Please don’t worry about me.”

“That’s -- that’s Doctor Zimmermann to you. I promise I’ll be there soon. I love you.”

Camilla stares at him. “Are you fucking nuts?” she hisses so only he can hear, and grabs his phone. “Bitty, there’s something wrong, I don’t know what happened, one minute he was fine and the next he’s acting -- oh my god, he’s putting his boots on. The news said -- Jack, where do you think you’re going? If you take one step out of that door to go see that man well God help me I’m leaving you for good and I’m taking the lawnmower.”

“Camilla, I’ll be back. I’ll come back. There are clean sheets in the closet outside the bathroom you can use for the guest bed, and we have extra toothbrushes in the cabinet,” Jack says. He’s already got his jacket on and pulls a toque from its pocket.

“Where are you going? Bitty said he was fine!”

“I just have to do this, you don’t understand. Beatrice can explain. I think this can fix it.”

“Fix what, Jack? There’s nothing to fix! This isn't broken!”

“Eric has to know I love him!”

“He fucking knows, Jack, you’ve been together for years!”

No. Eric has to know. Jack has to tell him. That’s how he stops this. That’s how he goes back to his life, that’s how he finally recovers. That’s how he and Bitty can move forward with their lives. This is how they get unstuck.

The wind and the snow buffets him like shards of glass against his skin when he steps out onto Jason Street and into his truck, and thank god he knows the streets of Samwell -- of Providence -- of his home -- so well now. He presses in the clutch and puts the gear in drive and sees at the door Camilla most likely still yelling, but her voice is lost to the storm, like things often are.

It’s all Jack can think: I love you Eric you need to know this you need to know you need to know. Everything will go back to normal but first you just need to know...

 

* * *

 

Jack wakes, so he is alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on the tumblr website @bluegrasshole for joke or @medric for pictures of houses under weird lighting.
> 
> Here's some info on when people used [Lysol as birth control and for douching](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lysols-vintage-ads-subtly-pushed-women-to-use-its-disinfectant-as-birth-control-218734/). Yikes.
> 
>  
> 
> Come reblog this work and view others from this fest [HERE](https://omgcpheartbreakfest.tumblr.com/) on the omgcpheartbreakfest tumblr page!


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